


remember me, once in a while (please promise me you'll try)

by lettersfromnowhere



Series: Starmora Oneshots [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Letters, there's a reason denial is the first stage of grief, why do I do this to myself?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 15:09:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14936669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: Gamora knew the odds were slim, that Peter didn't want to accept the near-inevitable. But he had to give in eventually - and so she left him with one final reminder.





	remember me, once in a while (please promise me you'll try)

**Author's Note:**

> *IW SPOILERS*  
> This is set between Gamora's capture on Knowhere and the team's arrival on Titan, so it takes place shortly after her death (which, remember, Peter is still unaware of). By that timeline, she gave Peter this made-up goodbye letter right before Knowhere. I don't know why I did this, to be honest; maybe I like to be sad. Why express yourself when you can depress yourself? 
> 
> I know Gamora isn't the letter type, but it seemed apropos in this situation. 
> 
> (TItle is from "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera.)

The faint trails of tears, yet to evaporate, lingered on Peter’s face for all his attempts to disguise them as he turned the sheet of paper in his hands, reluctant to open it for fear of tainting something so precious. He paid no heed to the ever-shifting starscape racing past the windows, trying not to risk being caught in tears as he thought of the moment, on the way to Knowhere, that Gamora had pressed the letter into his hands.

 “In case…” She said, but trailed off, neither wanting to confront the sentence’s inevitable end.

 

“No,” Peter had protested, voice thick with emotion. “You won’t-“

 

"It’s just a precaution,” Gamora had tried to reassure him, but even she knew her tone was entirely unconvincing.

 

Peter had kept the letter with him every moment they’d been apart, hoping desperately he’d never need to open it but unwilling to part from it lest it be lost along with –

 

 _No,_ he told himself, feverishly, with all of the desperation his worry-worn mind could muster.

 

Even so, a part of him ached to know what she had written, feeling Gamora slipping, slipping, slipping ever further as the days elapsed. He knew he would never accept the reality he tried to tell himself wasn’t inevitable until it was laid out before his eyes (and even then he’d try, ever vigilant, to escape, to change, to hide from it), but…

 

She’d given him this letter for a reason, and now, sitting alone in the cockpit, was as good a time as any. Hands trembling ever so slightly, he undid the paper’s neat folds.

 

       _Peter –_

_I know that you don’t want to be reading this; both of us know why. You can run from it, as I know you’ll try to do, but eventually you have to accept that I’m gone. Peter, believe me, it will be better that way. You’ve got a universe to save, with or without me._

“Stop talking like you’re already dead,” Peter ordered no one in particular, shaky hands causing the letter to tremble wildly, hot tears plopping against the paper. “You’re not. You’re _not!”_

_Though I know I should tell you to let go of me, for the good of everyone around you, a selfish part of me wants to make sure that you remember me. I know that most will remember me as a murderer, as a weapon – but not you. You were the first person who ever told me you loved me, who saw something in me that even I did not, and though at first I denied it, I soon realized that the first person who’d ever said those words to me was the only one from whom I ever wanted to hear them. The only one to whom I ever wanted to say them. It would be no use asking you to remember me – what purpose could my memory serve but to make you miserable? – but if you do, and I know you will, it brings me peace to know that you will remember me not as a tool, or a criminal, but as someone worthy of love even I do not believe I deserve._

Peter bristled at the mere _suggestion_ that he could simply move on like that, forget the love of his life at the drop of a hat, as he tried to steady his fingers, slow his heartbeat, and contain the faintly audible sobs wracking his chest at every word. Failing at all three, he simply rested his head against the control panel, not caring nearly as much as he should that his tears could short out the controls. No effort to steady his breathing had any effect.

 

“You can’t be gone,” he said helplessly, talking to the air as if knowing the futility of his words. “You can’t – you won’t – I can’t go on without you…”

 

Peter took in a sobbing gasp of air and turned his eyes back to the paper, too weakened to refuse the heartbreak waiting in every paragraph.

  _I know that I didn’t say it often, at least not out loud, but I love you, Peter. With all my heart. I hope that you knew that. You were always so quick to say it, as if loving me was the simplest thing in the world. But the words never came easily to me. “I love you” was as foreign a phrase to me as that Terran metaphor about a person’s health being like an instrument. I tried to show you, but I was never sure if I was doing it right. For all my flaws, all my hesitation, you loved me all the same. Yours was the first love I’d ever known that didn’t depend on my success or my ability to carry out orders. I didn’t understand it, at first, but I came to accept it, and to share in it. I truly do love you. I wish that I’d told you that more often._

“You will,” Peter told the air again. “We’re gonna find you. I promise.”

 He knew that such a promise was far beyond his keeping. It didn’t matter. More than ever, now, his heart felt snapped in half with the unaccepted knowledge that this letter, and its wish for more time to say all the words they should have, might be his only remaining trace of Gamora.

 “It’s not,” he insisted again. “She’s alive. We’re going to find her.”

 But Peter was losing the ability to even believe himself.

 

_I guess what I’ve been trying to say this whole time, in one way or another, is that I love you. I know I’ve said it a million times already, but I’ll say it again. You (and the Guardians, of course) are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. All of you gave me a clean slate and let me start over. And you gave me something I never thought I would find. I wish for all the world that I could have remained, lived a full life with the best people I have ever met, but that was never my choice to make. And now that I am gone, all I ask is that you all keep going in my absence. Save the galaxy as many times as it needs saving. Fall in love again, if you can. And remember, if you only save one memory of me, that I love you more than anything._

_With all my love,_

_Gamora_

 

'Quill?” Drax’s voice cut through Peter’s thoughts. “We’re arriving.”

 

Shoving aside the fast-falling tears, sucking in a heaving sob, Peter nodded, shoved the letter in his pocket, and prepared to disembark.

 

“You’re not lost yet,” Peter whispered, stroking the paper in his pocket. “We’re coming to get you. I promise.”

 

He hoped he could keep it.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to throw tomatoes at me; at least that would mean I did a good job of making this aptly depressing.


End file.
